Oh my, how President George W. Bush continues to live rent-free in the [alleged] minds of leftists
WASHINGTON — Many hailed the unveiling of former President George W. Bush’s official portrait in May as a rare moment of bipartisanship in a notoriously divided town. But the photos of Bush’s self-portraits published by The Smoking Gun Thursday night were met with confusion rather than cheers.
The paintings, obtained* by hackers who gained access to Bush’s sister’s email account and several others, show the former president in the shower and in a bathtub. A photo of Bush painting a chapel was also released.
*”Obtained”? No, stolen is the correct word.
Jack Fischer, who has an eponymous gallery in San Francisco, compared the interest in the Bush paintings to Adolf Hitler’s work in art school, while making it clear that he was only comparing the two artistically, not historically.
“What immediately comes to mind is Hitler’s paintings and the immediate brouhaha that that caused,” he said.
Ah, the BusHitler meme — nevermind that both President Eisenhower and Winston Churchill also painted as relaxing hobbies.
Then we have a full-on mockfest by “mega-critic” Jerry Saltz who reads all sorts of psycho-babble into GW’s personal hobby.
The other two images are not as sentimental. Both border on the visionary, the absurd, the perverse, the frat boy. Each echoes the same isolation in small space. Rumination without guilt. Thought without dark nights. The light in each is soft, subtle, embracing, even oscillating. As if the unreal has become a companion to the painter. The first depicts a man with gray hair standing in a shower looking at himself and us in a small shaving mirror. We see him only from behind, from the waist up. The shoulders are slightly rounded. The features are Bush’s. In the mirror is that stare, that empty, happy gaze. His eyes look slightly to our left, as if he can’t meet our own gaze and is in a world of his own. The glass shower door echoes the well-to-do nature of the portrait of the stone home. But also the layers of visibility, transparency, fragility.
G.W. Bush has gone on with his life, Leftists just can’t seem to move on.
m’chelle obama has a big fat ass I walked behind her at target one time when she was pushing a heavy cart around filled with cases of boost nutrition energy drink what made her need to throw a bit of glute into it
there was a LOT going on in those sweat pants I tell you what
i’ll be in my bunk
Dubya has talent for a beginner. His portrait of Barney is very sophisticated. Black dogs are difficult to photograph and even harder to paint.
national socialist hmmm baracky comes to mind
leigh
what really bothers me on the small scale is the assumption that only “talented” or “trained” painters should be allowed to pursue “art.”
I have encountered many young people who are timid in pursuing anything new because of fear of what others will say “What if I’m not good at it!”
I don’t give a flying fig if GW ever gets better as a painter. If its something he really enjoys, go for it!
oh good
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I hear ya, Darleen. The man’s retired. He can paint and play golf all he wants. He’s not bothering anyone.
People are awfully timid these days for being so “empowered” by newspeak. Afraid to paint is just one of them.
It’s too bad none of them seems to fear self-publishing their shitty novels or reciting horrid poetry that reads more like a laundry list and is riddled with errors (“sowing heads of wheat” Say what?).
Likewise with the sex tapes. Make it stop!
Wait – we’re supposed to care about paintings that Bush does for his own enjoyment (no federal grant, right?), in retirement, that were only obtained through hacking? The Bush who has very purposely not commented on his successor since leaving office. Man, these Lefties are desperate for a target for their 2 minutes of hate.
(Just remember, our electronic medical records made accessible to HHS will be totally secure.)
This is also the same Bush who isn’t going around the country, and the world, making speeches and millions of dollars, like Clinton does.
It’s probably something he wanted to do for a long time, and never had the time to try. I think it’s great.
The left’s hate has made them stupid.
Could be it isn’t arty appropriate, but nevertheless, a reaction is only that, a reaction: so, what comes to my mind are more American sorts of arts stuff, like Edward Hopper’s business as a question of choice, or Jamie Wyeth’s tones, with regard to look. Not to say as to the details, exactly, and certainly not to skill, but as to the subject matters and the impressions of the paintings.
Didn’t Rupert Murdoch and a number of his employees get into a spot of trouble across the pond for doing what the rest of the media is doing here? Of course, money changed hands in that case,
so I guess it’s only a crime to be the reciever of stolen goods, so to speak, if you pay for those goods.
Or maybe its because Republicans don’t have the same rights and expectations as Democrats.
My impression of the bath paintings is they are therapeutic works. W is trying to psychologically wash off the Rove stank.
Course I don’t claim to be an art expert or therapist, so take that with a grain of salt…
America was much better off when Bush was president
food stamp is raping all the opportunity plus forcing everybody to go on the food stamps and the shitty government healthcare
also he goes through money like his drunk-ass daddy went through whores
Living in the Dallas area as I do, I can tell you that the only thing W has lent his name to post term is supporting wounded veteran projects. He’s also known for showing up unannounced at DFW or Love airports when a group of returning soldiers arrives.
Darleen, I always liked this explanation of the source of that assumption:
The painting I liked best was the bathtub. Who among us has not visited their muse while the bath is filling?
I give the subject an A and execution a C. However, without examining the painting up close, it’s hard to tell if it is merely an early effort, or something done in the style of French Impressionism.
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Bush spent way too much money, but he loves this country and the soldiers.
The same holds true with a pikachu and a certain snowbilly.
Art (including music) critics are possibly the most useless people in the world. It amazes me that people actually get paid to do that.
If I like it, it is good art. If I don’t, I don’t give a rat’s ass was anybody else thinks.
[…] click (protein wisdom) covers Bush compared to Hitler when it comes to […]
The size and shape of Michelle Obama’s ass doesn’t concern me any more than did the size and shape of Barbara Bush’s ass. Full stop.
However, I would appreciate it if Michelle would spend less time telling us what to eat and drink, and more time providing some education. Information is far, far preferable to instruction. Also: a few words about how your hard-earned dollars might be spent on food that is food might be in order. There’s a reason that aspiring grocery stores like Wal-Mart have entire aisled full of stuff that isn’t food. There’s a reason you’re fat. Just having people inspect what they’ve brought home from the grocery store to see how many junk food calories they’ve just imported might go a ways toward something good happening. But Michelle? She blames the stores, just as others on her side of the ideological fence blames the arms manufacturers when a crazy person kills a bunch of innocents.
Blame the crazy person. Blame the fat person. Blame the drunk. A very high percentage of the time, the root cause is pretty clear. Why I even have a reason to point this out is a hugely fucking perplexing question that substantially reduces my optimism for the future of mankind.
She’d still be preaching what she doesn’t practice.
I’m willing to give Michelle the benefit of a scoche more room in the seat and thigh, McGehee. She doesn’t need to be a professional athlete to be talking about this kind of thing. And, frankly, she’s not really that overweight. She just has a badonkadonk.
What I also don’t care about: her cheeseburger consumption. I’m in fair to middling shape, and I like me a cheeseburger from time to time. With fries, even.
What I’d really like to try is a $100 cheeseburger at taxpayer expense, though. It’s the perks of being married to the President that she’s optioning that is where I think the legitimate criticisms lie.
Michelle Obama is neither a dietician or nutritionist. She is most certainly not a medical doctor. She is a failed lawyer who is married to a crooked president. I am more qualified to lecture people of all ages about their dietary needs.
Call me, Mich!
All kidding aside, our Surgeon General is obese. She is also a black woman, thus making her the perfect spokesman such a campaign.
Of course, that would force her to follow her own nutritional guidelines, so this will never happen.
I found a picture of her, and thought “why the hell is she in uniform”. So I Googled.
Some things are best left unlearned, maybe.
Seriously: NOAA is a uniformed service?
I get your personal animosity toward Michelle Obama, and I share that to some extent, but First Ladies tend to take up causes. It seems to be the thing. No one is forced to take them particularly seriously, and if I had to choose whether to hate Hillary Clinton’s national health care cause or Mrs. Obama’s, I’d go with the former.
I don’t give a shit about her weight, what bugs the hell out of me is that she preaches healthy eating and is shown not practicing what she preaches.
NOAA has a uniformed service. It’s also the parent agency of the one my wife works for, and in recent years it was trying to boost its own profile by insisting that my wife’s agency include “NOAA” in its name.
It’s also been redirecting funds appropriated for its sub-agencies and spending them elsewhere. Probbly buying ammo.
If she were preaching never eat another cheeseburger again as long as you live, I’d agree with you there.
But that’s kind of a side issue. The benefits of exercise and nutrition aren’t really in dispute, are they? Hypocrisy is not really one of the more serious offenses as far as I’m concerned.
I just realized I’m expending undue energy on this. It’s not really important enough to bother with, IMO. There’s lots worse things coming out of the White House than Michelle’s ass, unfortunately.
My animosity to toward Mrs. Obama is due to the fact that she is lecturing the nation about a subject that is important and about which she knows nothing.
Yes, First Ladies have pet causes. Cf. Laura Bush whose project was literacy. Mrs. Bush has a Master’s Degree in Library Science and was a librarian. If Michelle Obama had been a dietician in her former life, I’d just call her a hypocrite. As it is, she is a fraud and a dangerous one.
Literacy is still a huge problem. Michelle could pick up that cause instead, and perhaps do a little good.
She can’t seem to get the overeating meme behind her.
sometimes like on the backyard bbq burger bowl I forget to tell them no cheese but usually I remember
it’s all about making good choices
and what’s a lil pikachu got if he doesn’t have his choices?
Actually, most of her overeating seems to find its way behind her….
Heh. Good one Swen.
Mrs. Obama seems to struggle with her weight or at the very least has a problematic relationship with food. She admits that she doesn’t cook, and Sam Kass (the WH chef) was her personal chef in Chicago. Yet she portrays herself as a model proponent of healthy cooking and eating. She has admitted that she had never gardened before, yet she has an abundant garden (The Potemkin Garden) grown in toxic soil in unprepared ground that yields cabbages in January.
Like her husband, she is a scold. If she championed literacy and the need to be independent financially before starting a family–two huge problems in the black community–she could do a great deal of good.
I don’t mind if someone advocates healthy eating.
I mind if they advocate mandating healthy eating.
Michelle’s ass coming out of the White House.
I find the whole concept of worrying about other people’s BMI a sign of the apocalypse.
Thought the same thing in the eighties when we were worried about people being too thin, and the whole anorexia/bulimia scare.
Oh meteor of death, where art thou…?
Lee, I just wish people would go back to minding their own business.
A new age version of “You go to your church and I’ll go to mine.”
Dingdingdingdingding!
I give credit for this win to serr8d, even if he didn’t intend it. Which, I am thinking that he did.
I don’t care who you are; this is damned funny.
Shit. I hope Sarah Palin’s womb doesn’t paint anything or Andrew Sullivan will lose what’s left of his mind.
Ok, maybe we have a tie.